Wednesday, November 26, 2014

I have been gestating.My last blog post, which was my New Year's post, really got under my skin. I began to think about my own dreams. And what I would like to bring more fully to birth in the world. And so I went deep inside and visited my dreamscape. I found so many things there, but mainly I found that a dream I began to dream three years ago was still scratching at the walls of my consciousness, trying to get my attention.

There were a few fears I had to overcome to begin to bring this dream to birth. And so I spent some time with those fears and decided that I needed to take things one step at a time. First, I had to get really clear about my dream. I saw the poetry collection I've been working on for the last three years as a book in my hands and I saw the workshop that emerged out of writing the poetry being offered in beautiful places to as wide an audience as possible. A book and a widely-shared workshop. It felt like a huge undertaking.

One day, one of my writing mentors sent me a link to a publisher and suggested I send my manuscript to them. It is a small, independent literary publisher. They don't publish many books in a year, but the quality of what they offer is amazing. When submitting to their open submissions process, an editor reviews and critiques your work. It took a lot of courage for me to submit. It was my first experience submitting a manuscript and I think if I'd done more independent research on this publisher I might have been too intimidated to have submitted my work. But I trusted this writing teacher and submitted the manuscript.

They did not publish my work, but the feedback I received was truly valuable. It was worth every moment spent writing, editing, curating, and waiting. Among the comments were, "The speaker's transformation...is one that requires the reader to trust the poet. And we do. Your voice is clear and strong, speaking often without artifice or guile." And, "I was struck by the cadence of the words, the rhythm holding the poems together. It is at times subtle, but the music is there...When the cadence and metaphor worked together, as in 'Unbound,' I'm willing to take leaps with you, the poet." I was given some excellent criticism about ways to improve the collection, trimming it to "cast into sharp relief your subject." This, and other comments, feels something like a treasure map as I continue to work with the manuscript.The dream began to shape itself into a goal and the goal into objectives. I am almost ready to launch my project - a book and a widely-shared workshop. There have been many steps in between, and so this gestation has been both deep, inner work and exhausting, exhilarating outer action.

I turned my dream into a goal and my goal is now taking form.I've been thinking about the steps I outlined in my New Year's post, and one of them emerges as the most powerful ~Get comfortable with the "you" you need to be in order to live this dream. For me, this has been some of the hardest work these many months. It has required me to unearth some old stories that I've needed to heal and transform in order to see myself alive and present in the dream, and to make it happen. I am passionate about the healing power of story. About unearthing our stories like archaeologists painstakingly working a tel and the anthropologists who work with them to study the artifacts and create meaning around them. And so, Anthropology for the Soul: Unearthing Story for Healing, Growth, and Transformation, the workshop, has emerged out of my work and expresses a process to help reveal what is emerging and expressing itself through one's life stories. This empowering work helps people to heal and transform, unleashing their creative genius.

The kind of genius that has enabled the birth of Claws of Uthurunku, the poetry collection that emerged as I unearthed my own story, a healing story. Very shortly, I am hoping to post a photo of me, holding the book in my hands. For now, I hold a manuscript in my hands and a dream is coming into manifest form.

“There you are”He points to one such Boundary of Light I squeeze out dreams Like threads of light

About Me

Katherine Cartwright, speaker and workshop leader, writer,
empowerment coach, spiritual director, and transformational training designer,
works with groups to help them empower the life and mission of their
organizations and with individuals to heal and empower their lives.

An ordained
Lutheran pastor specializing in transformational ministries, she has served
congregations for 27 years and continues to preach, teach and consult.Sheis
an instructor for Pennsylvania Diakonia, teaching two courses, Biblical Images of the Life of the Church and
Communicating the Gospel, a columnist
for the Bucks County Courier Times, and maintains a coaching practice in Bucks County, PA. Her poetry and education page, Awakened Spirit,exploring the landscape of poetry, myth, and the fractured-expanding-healing
self,can be found on Facebook. She
is certified in Transformational Training Design and Empowerment Facilitation
through The Empowerment Institute School of Social Transformation.